How can students improve listening skills in English?

What English Learning Setting Is Best for Me?

It’s very important to be in the right setting when learning any part of English. With listening, it’s even more important, because listening is a skill that requires your careful attention.

Table of Contents Show

What English Learning Setting Is Best for Me?
Why improve your English listening skills?
How to improve your English listening skills?
Why Most People Fail to Improve Their English Listening Skills
A 5-Step Method to Improve Your Listening Skills

Here are three main types of learning situations:

Independent study: Independent means “by yourself,” so this involves studying English on your own time. You might like this option if you can get distracted by others in a classroom, are too busy for a formal class or prefer to study in different places (on a train, at home, at a park) whenever you can.

Classroom setting: A classroom will have other students with a teacher, and meets regularly. This might be for you if you like discussing with other students, feel uncomfortable alone with a teacher or have trouble focusing on your own.

One-on-one: One-on-one classes are sessions with you and a teacher (or a conversation partner). You might prefer these lessons if you feel shy around other students or if it’s easier to ask questions to a teacher or conversation partner privately (alone).

Try these different ways of practicing English listening skills, and pay attention to which works best for you. Once you’ve chosen your best learning setting, use the tips below to practice listening in English.

Why improve your English listening skills?

Why should I focus on listening—isn’t speaking the most important skill?

Sure, some teachers will tell you that you need to speak from day one. They’ll emphasise the importance of interaction with native speakers and the importance of producing language. And as a learner, you probably agree—most of my students pay me to tutor them because they want to be able to speak English, not listen to it.

Yes, speaking is important. Yes, learning to produce English is part of learning it. But, in my opinion, listening is the most important English skill. Here’s why.

Listening is a prerequisite for speaking.

You can’t have a conversation with someone if you can’t understand what they’re saying. Listening is the first step to being able to have a conversation. Get good at listening, and you’ll set yourself up for being able to have successful conversations.

If you start with speaking, you’ll get frustrated.

Feeling pressured to speak right from the beginning can be uncomfortable because you don’t know the language yet. It’s one reason people feel like English is too hard and give up. Trying to speak right away can be frustrating.

Listening helps you build basic language skills so that when you start speaking, you’re not going to feel like it’s impossible.

This isn’t just my opinion, it’s one of the fundamental principles of Stephen Krashen, the legendary linguist, Professor Emeritus at the University of Southern California, and someone who certainly knows more about how to effectively learn languages than almost everyone else on the planet.

“The best methods are therefore those that supply 'comprehensible input' in low anxiety situations, containing messages that students really want to hear. These methods do not force early production in the second language, but allow students to produce when they are 'ready', recognizing that improvement comes from supplying communicative and comprehensible input, and not from forcing and correcting production.”

Stephen Krashen, Principles and Practice Second Language Acquisition

When you can listen, the other skills will come

Listening activities don’t only improve your listening skills—your listening skill actually “spills over” into the other skills. That means that the better you get at listening, the more your other skills will also improve.

For example, when you engage in a listening activity, you are working on your grammar, building your vocabulary, and even improving your English speaking skills. So focus on your listening, and you’ll get better at the other skills too.

It’s low risk and easy

Speaking is great, but it’s also a bit scary, isn’t it? Sure, there are lots of speaking exercises you can do without a partner… but when you do speak with someone you can feel a bit silly or awkward.

Those feelings go away with practice, but they can stop us from actually engaging in conversation. Plus, the logistics of organising conversations with other people can be a bit of a challenge itself, especially if you live in a non-English speaking country, as most learners do.

Listening, unlike having a conversation with others, is easy both logistically and emotionally. You can do it anywhere and for as long as you like. And you don’t feel silly doing it. Listening activities are convenient and much less scary!

Extra reasons to practise listening

Here are some more reasons to prioritise your listening skills:

Accessibility. Listening activities are available anywhere you can use your smartphone. Just bring some headphones and you can turn spare time into English listening practice.
Free or low cost. Listening activities are generally free or low cost (unlike learning English in a classroom or hiring an English tutor!)
Multitasking. Listening activities are great because they are easy to build into your day while you’re doing other activities. Doing the dishes? Try a podcast. At the gym? Listen to music. Commuting to work? Catch your favourite radio show.

How to improve your English listening skills?

Along with reading, writing, and speaking, listening is one of the key skills you need to master if you want to master the English language. However, it is also a skill that many learners struggle with.

Why Most People Fail to Improve Their English Listening Skills

There’s only one reason people fail: they don’t listen to enough English.

Makes sense, right? If you spend 1,000 hours listening to English, your listening will definitely improve.

Unfortunately, here’s what many people do to improve their listening:

Watch a few movies in English every week.
Listen to something in English 3 – 5 times a week.
Listen to English for 15 minutes per day.

These actions are weak. They aren’t significant enough to make a difference.

Think about it. If you listen to English for 15 minutes a day. One year from now, you will have listened to only 91 hours of English.

This is not enough! It will take you many years to see an improvement.

Bonus: Want to speak English well but don't have a practice partner? There's still a way! I show you exactly how in my English speaking course.

A 5-Step Method to Improve Your Listening Skills

written by
James Granahan

Full disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. ?

Let’s talk listening skills. Do you remember how you felt the first time you heard someone speak your target language?

Bamboozled?

Personally, I’ve always found listening to be the most difficult language learning skill. Maybe you feel the same way?

In this post, we’ll look at the key to improving your listening and I’ll share the method I use to work on my listening skills.

One the reasons I used to struggle with listening is that I didn’t really know how to practice it. Should you read along while you listen or should you listen without a text? What should you listen to? Do you need to translate every single word?

I had many failed experiments when I first started learning Spanish and it took me a long time to figure out the best methods to practice my listening skills.

In fact, it was only when I moved to Argentina that I finally realised what I needed to do to improve my listening and I discovered it somewhat by accident! Before I arrived in Buenos Aires, I thought my Spanish was pretty good. Then I landed and I couldn’t understand anything! It was a bit of a baptism of fire! On the bus, in the supermarket, no matter where I went I found myself smiling, nodding and desperately trying to work out what people were saying to me.

The author James in Buenos Aires.

However, over the coming weeks and months my listening skills began to significantly improve and this taught me a very valuable lesson: To improve your listening skills, you have to truly listen. You have to listen with focus and attentiveness. Passively listening to things you don’t understand is never going to work.

I was forced to do this because I’d moved to a new country where most people don’t speak English very well and I had to figure out how to get by. But the same concept applies whether you’re travelling abroad or learning the language from home. Active listening, not passive listening, is what will give you results.